OKLAHOMA CITY – An Oklahoma City surgery center is offering a new kind of price transparency, posting guaranteed all-inclusive surgery prices online. The move is revolutionizing medical billing in Oklahoma and around the world.

Dr. Keith Smith and Dr. Steven Lantier launched Surgery Center of Oklahoma 15 years ago, founded on the simple principle of price honesty.

“What we’ve discovered is health care really doesn’t cost that much,” Dr. Smith said. “What people are being charged for is another matter altogether.”

The posted price at Surgery Center of Oklahoma was $5,700, one-fifth the price.

What's your Medicare co-pay?

20%, right?

Same for most other "health plans" when it comes to surgery.

Ok.

So the price is 1/5th that of the hospital.

That is, the all-in price is the same as your co-pay.

So what did you buy with your so-called "insurance"? Nothing.

This is a rather good scam, if you can get away with it. In any other line of work I'm sure the various attorneys general could come up with a list of violations of consumer protection laws, not to mention just plain-old fashioned racketeering (coercing people to buy something under threat of ruining them when in fact they could buy the same thing for cash were all the collusions not to occur) -- if they cared to.

This is what I've been pointing out now since this debate began -- the entire "industry" is literally stealing 80% of your health care dollars, and when you analyze the issue on a purely arithemtic level you find that you could buy the procedure in cash for your deductible and co-pay combined in many if not most instances.

The remaining and actual risk is for truly catastrophic and rare situations -- such as a car accident that leaves you with a $1m+ medical bill, or a cancer that you can actually beat (that is, it's not a death sentence that simply bleeds your estate to zero before it kills you) but costs $500,000 to successfully beat into indefinite remission.

True catastrophic insurance to cover those extremely rare incidents could be had very cheaply; certainly less than $100 a month even for older people and probably for less than $1/day.

You're being robbed folks, and Obamacare is simply institutionalization of the robbery in such a fashion that it becomes much more difficult to stop.

The Cajun 7 Course Meal; 1 lb. of boudin and a six pack of Abita beer.

And........................................................................................................ Waiting for the defenders of all things liberal to hop on and tell us how being robbed is a good thing.

Proponents of President Obama’s “Affordable Care Act” often suggest skeptics look across the Atlantic to the United Kingdom as an example of what can be made better with the American health care system.

But doctors in the United Kingdom have about had it, it seems, calling their own system “worse than Communist China.”

A recent report in the U.K. Telegraph chronicles the conclusions of the British Medical Association’s annual conference, where doctors loudly lamented the undue power of abusive managers and bureaucrats, who seem to have as much or more power in hospitals than the actual doctors.

“The result is the perfect toxic professional working environment for this explosive mixture to generate disasters such as Mid Staffordshire which did so much harm to patients,” said Dr. Peter Holden, a member of the BMA’s GP negotiating committee.

“Not even in Communist China did they have managers overruling doctors in the operation of hospitals and health services,” he added.

Proponents of President Obama’s “Affordable Care Act” often suggest skeptics look across the Atlantic to the United Kingdom as an example of what can be made better with the American health care system.

But doctors in the United Kingdom have about had it, it seems, calling their own system “worse than Communist China.”

A recent report in the U.K. Telegraph chronicles the conclusions of the British Medical Association’s annual conference, where doctors loudly lamented the undue power of abusive managers and bureaucrats, who seem to have as much or more power in hospitals than the actual doctors.

“The result is the perfect toxic professional working environment for this explosive mixture to generate disasters such as Mid Staffordshire which did so much harm to patients,” said Dr. Peter Holden, a member of the BMA’s GP negotiating committee.

“Not even in Communist China did they have managers overruling doctors in the operation of hospitals and health services,” he added.

Indaswamp wrote: ......Not to mention the massive number of doctors that will retire because of Obamacare.

That's ok. All of the current occutard medical students will replace them. After all, they aren't going into the medical field because it pays well, they're doing it for the good of humanity and will settle for middle class earnings in order to keep the costs of healthcare down.............pffffffft!

Proponents of President Obama’s “Affordable Care Act” often suggest skeptics look across the Atlantic to the United Kingdom as an example of what can be made better with the American health care system.

But doctors in the United Kingdom have about had it, it seems, calling their own system “worse than Communist China.”

A recent report in the U.K. Telegraph chronicles the conclusions of the British Medical Association’s annual conference, where doctors loudly lamented the undue power of abusive managers and bureaucrats, who seem to have as much or more power in hospitals than the actual doctors.

“The result is the perfect toxic professional working environment for this explosive mixture to generate disasters such as Mid Staffordshire which did so much harm to patients,” said Dr. Peter Holden, a member of the BMA’s GP negotiating committee.

“Not even in Communist China did they have managers overruling doctors in the operation of hospitals and health services,” he added.

In many cases if you want decent health care in Europe you need to purchase supplemental insurance. For example, in Ireland, everyone who has a heart attack gets the same ambulance ride to the ER, but if there are complications that require treatment from a specialist, the person without the "extra" insurance is SOL.